Recipe: Lemon Curd and Raspberry Cream Naked Cake

Although Autumn has crept upon us, this week has been beautifully sunny. To celebrate the season's last salute to Summer, I set about baking this little naked cake. To me, nothing screams 'Summer!' more than raspberries and cream and, well, I just have a weakness for lemon curd! Put the two with cake and I must surely be onto a winner?

To recreate this little beauty, you will need the following...

For the lemon curd:
The grated rind and juice of one and a half lemons
50g butter
65g sugar
2 eggs

For the raspberry cream:
150ml double cream
5 or 6 raspberries
2tbsp icing sugar

For the Sponge:
100g butter
100g sugar
100g self raising flour
2 eggs
juice of one and a half lemons
1tsp baking powder

I always start by making the lemon curd. This is very simple. All you have to do is whisk up your two eggs in a bowl with your lemon juice and rind. Then pour this over your butter (cut into little bits) and and sugar which should be in a heat proof bowl. Place your bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir together the mixture until the butter melts. Continue to stir until the mixture starts to thicken which should take around 7mins. Once it has thickened, take it off the heat and let it cool- it should thicken more as it gets cooler. Once it is cold, you will have a tangy lemon curd, ready to be used on your cake. (And don't worry! You should have a plenty extra left over as well!)

Next, the cake. This is a super easy no fuss 'all in' recipe which my family has championed since before I could reach the mixer. Preheat the oven at 180 degrees and then simply bung all your cake ingredients into a bowl and whisk. Once you have a fluffy mixture, separate it out into two well greased cake tins- the ones I used were fairly small and shallow, with a roughly 6inch diameter. Then, pop your tins into the oven and let them cook for about 25-30mins, until golden brown. As soon as they're done, upturn your cakes onto a wire rack and leave them to fully cool.
N.B. you could also use one deeper cake tin and cut this in half once it's cool, although personally I never manage to cut it straight! If you do this, you will also need to adjust the cooking time appropriately. 

While the cakes are cooking and cooling, take the time to create your cream filling. Simply pour your double cream into a mixing bowl, add two tablespoons of icing sugar and your raspberries. Then, beat hard until the cream thickens to make stiff peeks. This can really take some work if you're doing it by hand but the end cake is definitely worth it!

Once you have your cakes, your cream and your curd, it's just a simple matter of assembling your cake! Take one cake and smear one face with lemon curd and do the same to the other cake, just with the cream. Sandwich together and vôlá, you are done! I used a sieve to dust mine with a little extra icing sugar and stuck on some raspberries and blueberries with some icing paste (icing sugar and a couple of drops of water, mixed to a thick paste) to make it a bit prettier.

I have to say, personally I think this cake is one of the most elegant and tasty things to come out of my kitchen. One mouthful and you can practically taste the summer sun! What do you guys think?

The Travel Diaries: Hanoi

In between and after our time in Ninh Binh and Ha Long Bay, Jossi and I kept returning to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. There were a lot of different things to discover there and so we spent much of our days roaming the streets, finding new places to eat, shops to visit and sites to see.

One evening, Jossi took me to a restaurant, Quan An Neon, her and her family had visited before. The whole place was done up like a covered market, with bamboo stalls lining the walls, filled with busily cooking chefs, and jungle-like plants everywhere. The food was some of the best we had in Vietnam.

We ordered an amazing papaya salad (the dressing was just incredible!), prawns steamed in coconut water, fried spring rolls, squid, a rice dish and pho. We shared all the dishes while Joss laughed at my (slowly improving!) chopstick skills.

Another fantastic little food place we found was called Pho 24. This is a Vietnamese chain of restaurants selling, unsurprisingly, primarily pho. Pho is a thin noodle soup, flavoured with fresh veg and normally a combination of meats. It was delicious! They also served this amazing lemon-y lime drink which was so tasty that Joss and I returned to Pho 24 twice more just to drink the drink!

 While wandering through the street, Joss and I happened upon the Women's Museum. Surprisingly, this was one of the most interesting places we visited. Each floor was devoted to a different area of a Vietnamese woman's life: fashion, 'in the home', and 'in history'. We learnt a surprising amount about Vietnamese life as a whole and about the important roles women have undertaken, from bread winners to soldiers in the Vietnamese war, but also about how hard life can be for the Vietnamese people. One short video on the life of the street sellers was particularly moving as it showed us how women would leave their homes in the countryside and work impossibly long days to try and make enough money to send back to their families.

During our visit to the Museum, we were lucky as a special Korean cultural exchange event was happening. Therefore, there were a number of things happening, including a dance and music show. However, most importantly, this meant that we had the chance to dress up in traditional Korean outfits! This meant that two very excitedly giggling girls queued with a bunch of (much younger) students in order to try on the colourful outfits.... I regret nothing!

One of our final activities in Vietnam was a cooking course at The Orchid restaurant. This was absolutely fantastic and definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

We were picked up at our hotel door by little carriages on the front of bikes, given Vietnamese traditional hats and whisked off to a local market where our chef took us to buy our ingredients for the day and try some local delicacies.

As our chef, Mr Tien,  took us around, he explained where some of the food came from and what it was used for. I was shocked to find out that the meat we saw being sold had all been butchered that morning in the countryside and when it ran out, the sellers would return home, butcher more and bring it straight back!

One local delicacy we were encouraged to try was duck foetus, boiled in it's egg. This however proved to be a little much for Joss and I who struggled to take a bite while the store holders laughed good naturally at us. Thankfully, after, we were offered something a little more palatable- cinnamon pork in a soft, doughy bun!

Once back at the restaurant, we were excited to discover that we would be the only two in the class! As our class kicked off, we learnt how to finely chop our ingredients and watched as Mr Tien minced pork by hand, simply by chopping it over and over with a knife in each hand. We also saw how to BBQ inside- simply set up your BBQ next to a window with a fan behind and just blow any smoke straight on out!

By the end of the class, we had cooked Hanoi spring rolls, char-grilled pork balls with vermicelli, fried chicken with lemongrass and chilli and a kind of black bean desert.

The food we created was amazing. Once it was all prepared, we sat down and ate a banquet right there in the kitchen. There was so much food that Joss and I didn't have a hope of finishing it and so our leftovers were kindly boxed up for us and we polished them off for dinner as well!

Sadly, before long it was time to leave Vietnam. We had had an incredible time, met some lovely people and experienced some amazing things. But as they say, all good things must come to an end. Hopefully though, we'll be back soon!